


this maudlin career has come to an end

by buttface



Series: cabaletta [6]
Category: Show By Rock!! - All Media Types
Genre: Crying, Identity, M/M, Missing Scene, POV Second Person, POV Second Person: Shuuzo, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:59:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27581035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttface/pseuds/buttface
Summary: Shuu after the last show, alone for the first and last time.*It’s good that you can hear his voice furiously calling your name. It’s good because as it grows distant and faded you know he hasn’t followed after you. He let you walk away without a fight. That’s good, isn’t it?
Relationships: Rom/Shu Zo (Show By Rock!!)
Series: cabaletta [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1688323
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	this maudlin career has come to an end

**Author's Note:**

> Every time I listen to Cadenza I swear I get more out of it and also I become even more maudlin for Shuu/zo. Anyway this isn't really much to do with anything else in the series it's abstractly part of but it's my series and I can write what I want and what I want is the elusive Shuuzo POV and just absolutely wrecking him
> 
> There's a little bit of imagery around self-destruction. This is in the context of ending the Shuu persona and not actual self-harm, but just so it doesn't blindside you.

It’s the time you’ve been preparing for, the time to walk away from him for the last time. You’d imagined it on a more dignified stage than a back alley, but maybe this is more appropriate considering all the things you’ve failed to accomplish together. The weather is doing its best to provide atmosphere, at least. You wish you could have done a few shows like this first.

You should have practiced this more. It’s harder than you expected to keep that smirk frozen on your face. Don’t turn your head for anything. Keep taking each step as if you didn't care, keeping pace with the steady beat pounding in your mind. You made your choice. You’ve burned your bridge. Looking back now would ruin the moment for both of you.

It’s good that you can hear his voice furiously calling your name. It’s good because as it grows distant and faded you know he hasn’t followed after you. He let you walk away without a fight. That’s good, isn’t it?

Sentimentality drove you to pick a familiar part of town for your last show, and so you know there’s a park nearby big enough that even the all-night neon glow of the city doesn’t quite penetrate. You point your feet that way, still calm and steady, as if you were in no hurry to get to or from anything.

Nobody looks twice at you. Either you’re managing to sell it or nobody cares.

You feel like you’re barely moving. You feel lightheaded, like you’re floating. Like a ghost moving through the streets of your home for the last time. Judas has promised you training overseas, and this will all be easier if you can get away for a bit. You’re too much a product of your time here, of who you spent those years with. New scenery will make it easier to build the new you from the ground up. You can leave those years here like a shed skin.

Once you make it far enough into the park that you’re no longer visible from the road, you finally let your strength give out as you fall to your knees into a puddle. The rain pounds down on you, leaving your hair straggled over your face. Nobody from tonight’s audience would recognize you now, with all the product washed out of your hair and your long jacket clinging to you despite all the work you put into making it flare out. With mud on your boots and your mascara running and snot pouring from your nose. It doesn’t matter anymore. You would have let them see you like this if it would make them light up for you, but now it’s just the last gasps of a dying self, the crack running down the back of a moulting cicada.

You still hear the crash of drums in your mind. You want the thunder to drown it out, but it’s never loud enough, the lightning never bright enough. You just feel the cold, the knowledge that nobody will be running their hands through your hair as you warm yourself up in the shower this time, the sodden cling of the clothes you’ll never wear again. The crash of his drums, the last thing you’ll ever hear from him in his place behind you on the stage. 

It was kind of you to let him finish off that song. The last song you’ll write for him. The last show.

You haven’t managed to let go yet. You need to let all of Shuu go. Burn him on a pyre, sink him in the river, whatever it takes. Let there be nothing left for you to miss. When you’re done, you’ll call Judas to come get you, as you agreed. You can’t take any of this with you.

You scream until your throat is raw and your voice is ragged. It’s not enough. You need to let that voice go, too. All those feelings you kept rusted in place in your heart. Take a deep breath into your sore lungs and scream it out again, until you’re coughing and choking and all you taste is salt. Heap those feelings on the pyre in your heart, let the smoke of your regrets wisp out of your mouth until it’s all burnt away. You won’t let any of those things take root in the new you.

You keep thinking he’ll hear you and come for you. You fear it and you hope for it in equal, humiliating measure. You’ll always wonder, for years after, what he would have done.

But nobody hears you, nobody comes. Your voice is swallowed up by the city, unheard, inconsequential.

You swear it’ll be the last time.


End file.
